Thursday, June 16, 2016

disease that affects 20 times as many people as the flu and kills far more, too. In a desperate attempt to curtail this growing epidemic, a release of genetically engineered mosquitoes is under way. But is there a safer option?

Florida Keys Community Is Latest Testing Ground for Transgenic Mosquito

Meetings for Key Haven residents have already been held to discuss Oxitec's proposed GE mosquito trial in the area.5

In early March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a draft of its environmental impact study6 of the GE mosquito, declaring it will have "no significant impact" on the health of residents or the environment in this Florida Keys' community.7

As noted by CNN, Zika wasn't the original reason Oxitec's transgenic mosquitoes were considered.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito also carries the dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya virus, and outbreaks of dengue fever in the Florida Keys in 2009 and 2010 prompted local mosquito control officials to look for more effective options to control the non-native insect.

According to Oxitec, field tests in Piracicaba, Brazil, led to an 82 percent decline to the mosquito population over an eight-month period.8 In the Cayman Islands, 96 percent of native mosquitoes were suppressed in a 2010 field trial.

The Cayman Islands recently approved full deployment of the Oxitec mosquito, starting in June, with weekly releases of hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes scheduled to continue for at least nine months.9

However, while the FDA has given the transgenic mosquito the thumbs up, Key Haven residents are not particularly keen on being guinea pigs.

Especially since neither dengue, Zika, or any of the other diseases spread by Aedes aegypti pose a threat to health in the Florida Keys.10 Mila de Mier, who lives in the small community of Key Haven, told CNN:11

"Less than a mile from the release site is a senior center and a local school. That area was not one that was affected by dengue. Not a single case ever. So why does the FDA want to do an experiment here when they can do this all over the world? ...

There has been no acceptance from community members. If the local and federal government fail to protect us and our wishes, our last option will be to trust the judicial system and bring it to the court. A legal battle is an option at this point."

What Could Go Wrong?

While decimating Aedes aegypti populations may sound like a good solution to eliminate transmission of disease, there's always the potential for unforeseen side effects.

A 2011 article in The New York Times12 brought up a number of concerns, including the possibility that these genes might infect human blood, not through insect bites, but by finding entry through skin lesions or inhalation.

According to the Institute of Science in Society,13 such transmission could potentially create "insertion mutations" and other unpredictable types of DNA damage in the host.

Alfred Handler, Ph.D., a geneticist at the Agriculture Department in Hawaii has also pointed out that mosquitoes can develop resistance to the lethal gene. If such mosquitoes were to be released, the resistance could spread to the offspring.

According to Todd Shelly, an entomologist for the Agriculture Department in Hawaii, 3.5 percent of the insects in a laboratory test actually survived to adulthood, despite carrying the lethal gene.14

Another factor that could make the GE mosquito backfire is the fact that Oxitec's mosquitoes were designed to die in the absence of tetracycline (which is introduced in the lab in order to keep them alive long enough to breed).

However, tetracycline and other antibiotics are showing up in the environment, in soil and surface water samples. The mosquitoes were designed with the assumption they would NOT encounter tetracycline in the wild. With tetracycline exposure (for example, in a lake) these insects could potentially thrive.

Last but not least, by employing so-called gene drive technology (which ensures that all offspring end up with the GE gene), concerns arise over the impact on biodiversity and the ecosystem as a whole.

Some argue that the extinction of the Aedes aegypti would hardly result in ecosystem collapse, and this may well be true. However, the Aedes aegypti is certainly not the only insect being genetically altered and released into the wild.

The larger problem lies in the fact that population scale ecosystem engineering is taking place without proper regulatory oversight, transparency, or public discussion. Decades' old regulations are being relied on for these novel technologies, and they are sorely inadequate for the task.

Monday, June 13, 2016

Something strange is indeed going on in regard to this. I had felt a shift in reality awhile back, and a weird timeline; time either shortened, or speeded up. I even experimented several times with setting a minute timer, closing my eyes, and counting 10 seconds - and usually it dinged 'way before I reached the 10 seconds. Got the same result with 5 seconds, etc. Try it! Also, I notice that the sun is setting in places it never did before.. is this a parallel universe, or is the earth tilting on its axis more than it's supposed to at this time of year? The Inuit of the Arctic Circle think the sun is misplaced. That'll be the subject of another Global Rumblings blog. I lose things and look for them over and over, and then, voila' it's there again where I thought I had put it in the first place. My husband will insist I said something, and I insist to him I wouldn't have said it, because it wasn't true, and I remember it differently. I was beginning to think I'm getting Alzheimer's! Now that I've explained the Mandela Effect to him, we can just laugh over it. We're happy we're together in both universes! Pray that doesn't change. According to string theory, there may be as many as 11 parallel universes! Are we bouncing around in them?Dee Rohe, Global RumblingsComments from the author, TruthUnveiled777 of the above Youtube:

Northern Nicaragua rattled by 6.1 magnitude quake

A magnitude 6.1 earthquake and a series of aftershocks rattled the northwestern coast of Nicaragua late Thursday.

The U.S. Geological Survey detected a quake with a depth of 6.2 miles after 9 p.m. local time. Its epicenter was 10.6 miles east of Puerto Morazan, Nicaragua, 70.8 miles northwest of the capital,Managua.

Minutes later, a series of aftershocks followed: first a 5.1 magnitude quake, then a 4.8 and a 4.6, according to the USGS.

The newspaper La Prensa reported that the walls of a church had collapsed in the nearby city of Chinandega, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

Authorities are looking to assess the damage in one of the cities closest to the epicenter, El Viejo, government spokeswoman Rosario Murillo told newspaper La Prensa.

"The earthquake was practically felt throughout the entire country," she told La Prensa in Spanish. "It was an enormous, unusually strong quake."

Saturday, June 04, 2016

FEMA PLANS MASSIVE DRILL ‘CASCADIA RISING’

FOR DEVASTATING QUAKE AND TSUNAMI SCENARIO

It is named after the Cascadia Subduction Zone — a 800-mile-long fault just off the coast that runs from Northern California to British Columbia.

Recent subduction zone earthquakes around the world underscore the catastrophic impacts we will face when the next Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and tsunami occurs:

Indonesia (2004): M9.1 --- 228,000 fatalities

Chile (2010): M8.8 --- 500 fatalities

Japan (2011): M9.0 --- 18,000 fatalities

Published on Jul 16, 2015

Seismologists and federal officials are predicting a devastating earthquake in the Pacific Northwest along the Cascadia Fault line that could, theoretically, leave tens of thousands of people dead and even more displaced. RT’s Simone Del Rosario speaks with seismologist John Vidale about the possibility of a disaster striking.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of North America spans from northern California to southern British Columbia. This subduction zone can produce earthquakes as large as magnitude 9 and corresponding tsunamis. Scientific evidence indicates that a magnitude 8.0-9.0 earthquake occurs along the 800-mile long fault on average once every 200 to 500 years. The last major earthquake and tsunami along the fault occurred over 300 years ago in 1700. See Larger Original

New post on The Extinction Protocol:

June 2016 - PORTLAND —Imagine a devastating earthquake and tsunami have cut off Pacific Northwest coastal communities. Phone and internet service have collapsed. Ham-radio operators living on the stricken coast fire up their radios, contact emergency managers and report on the magnitude of the disaster so that no time is wasted in saving lives. This is the kind of scenario that will be rehearsed during the second week of June in a massive earthquake and tsunami readiness drill that has been developed by the U.S. government, the military, and state and local emergency managers over the past few years to test their readiness for what — when it strikes — will likely be the nation’s worst natural calamity.

The June 7-10 exercise is called Cascadia Rising. It is named after the Cascadia Subduction Zone — a 600-mile-long fault just off the coast that runs from Northern California to British Columbia. “This is the largest exercise ever for a Cascadia break,” said Lt. Col. Clayton Braun of the Washington State National Guard. Braun has been a key planner of the doomsday drill, which is being overseen by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Federal officials say about 20,000 people will be involved in the disaster drill, representing various federal agencies, the U.S. military, state and local emergency response managers across the Pacific Northwest, Native American tribes and emergency management officials in British Columbia. One main goal of the exercise is to test how well they will work together to minimize loss of life and damages when a mega-quake rips along the Cascadia Subduction Zone and unleashes a killer tsunami.

Awareness of the seismic threat looming just off the Pacific Northwest dates back to the 1980s, when researchers concluded that coastal lands long ago had been inundated by a tsunami. Research also indicated that a tsunami that was documented in Japan in January 1700 originated from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, also known as the CSZ. Research suggests that the CSZ on average produces magnitude 9.0 quakes every 500 years, but big quakes have been separated by as few as 200 years and as many as 1,000. So it is impossible to predict when the next monster quake occurs. However, tectonic stresses have been accumulating in the CSZ for more than 300 years and seismologists say it could rupture at any time.

More than 8 million people live in the area that is vulnerable to the Cascadia Subduction Zone. It contains the most heavily populated areas of the Pacific Northwest, including Seattle and Portland, as well as Interstate 5, one of the nation’s busiest roads. Coastal towns are especially at risk. Studies have forecast that while 1,100 people could die from a 9.0 magnitude quake, 13,500 could perish from the tsunami that would slam into the coast within 15 to 30 minutes after the shaking begins.

A scenario document written in preparation for Cascadia Rising exercise states “the scale of fatalities across the coast may overwhelm the resources of local governments.” Whole towns along the coast may disappear. Hospitals could either collapse or be too severely damaged to handle casualties. All across the region between the Pacific and the Cascade Range, bridges and roads could be destroyed, fuel supplies and communications disrupted, and buildings and crucial infrastructure may sink into soil that’s been liquefied by the intense shaking. –Seattle Times

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